Before Beatrice
by Keeta-x-Tribias
Summary: Prior to Beatrice and Caleb, before Tobias, before everything finally broke loose, there was the misfit in the Abnegation initiation, there was Natalie Prior. Before even she knew. -Tribias-


**A/N: **There just aren't enough Natalie stories out there.

* * *

Natalie shivered slightly on the train ride home. It was unusually cold today. Or maybe it was simply her nerves; after all, today was the day of the aptitude tests. She knew she wasn't going to get Dauntless, nor was she going to get Candor. She's too good at lying, too good at keeping secrets. Maybe that's a good thing. The Abnegation woman had told her she wasn't to tell anyone that her results were inconclusive. Honestly, she hadn't been too surprised with Erudite. Her teachers were always shocked on how well she did. The real shock to her was the fact that the stronger results, Dauntless and Abnegation, didn't even apply to her.

She wasn't Abnegation, she wasn't selfless. She didn't think she could be able to push herself away from, well, herself. She definitely wasn't Dauntless. She was a coward. She was afraid. She didn't know of what, but ever since the results came in, she had been afraid. Afraid, maybe of why being Divergent was so dangerous; or more likely, what she'll do, where she'll go. She didn't like not knowing. No, she was afraid of it. She didn't like being afraid, either.

* * *

She took a deep breath as the Abnegation man held the dagger out to her. She turned to the bowls. She stood by the Abnegation, Erudite, and Dauntless bowls. Her mother had instructed her not to go back to Dauntless. It was too dangerous. She knew the reason behind that. Even her mother knew that she wouldn't make it. She was a coward. She was weak. And what happened to the weak in Dauntless initiation? They don't make it.

But she didn't like being controlled. She didn't want it. She wanted to prove to her mother that she wasn't weak, that she could make it. She slashed her wrist and held it out.

Blood dripped on the smooth stones of Abnegation. She shocked herself. She had meant to go to Dauntless, but her arms betrayed her. And it was too late. She quietly walked to the space saved for Abnegation initiates. As she passed her old faction, her mother nodded her approval, as if she wanted her to go to the grey faction, and her old _friends _glared at her, hissing _coward_. She held back the tears as the word rang in her mind: _coward, coward, coward. _She looked down, hoping the factions would focus on the next initiate. They did.

It was only when she went to bed for the night when she let go of the tears.  
_Coward. She was a coward._

* * *

The grey walls seemed to strangle her. The small room of the Abnegation family was a huge leap from her bedroom back at Dauntless. She wonders now what her mother has done with all her old items. Probably surrendered her gun, not that it was important; it was just a practice gun, with plastic pellets to shoot, instead of real bullets. Probably cleaned out her room, painted over the strength and courage quotes she'd painted, and stripped her bed of the pink and black sheets. She wasn't coming home, anymore. Not ever. They had asked her to remove her favourite earrings- her only piercings; as well as the colored streak by her right ear. The only thing that was left of her old home was the tattoo- her only one.

* * *

It's been a week since the beginning of initiation. It was the easiest, of all factions. It was simple community service. But to her, it was the hardest. The factions all have their own prejudices. And even those factions that weren't supposed to judge did. They didn't make a habit of showing it, but they did.

No one had told her directly, but most of her fellow initiates had looked at her and have decided that she didn't belong. It was as if they were sizing her up, trying to find her every flaw. What else do they have to look for? They already knew: she was afraid.

* * *

The only one that bothered to speak to her throughout initiation was the only other transfer, the previously-Erudite boy, Andrew. In her uniform clothes, no one could see the tattoo except for her, and she knew people would forget eventually. But she somehow knew that he wouldn't. No, he'd been her only friend, and she knew that, somehow, they'd both make it. This faction was alien to the both of them, as were they to the faction. But they would make it, one step at a time.

It's been years. She hadn't forgotten everything. She still remembered her birthday; it was the one day that marked all the transfers, since only they remember them. She never celebrated it, though. Neither did they Andrew's. But it was the day the faction granted her use of the mirror. Every year, she would come in alone, put on her earrings, look at herself, and try to keep the memory of who she was before right before she cut her hair to the uniform length, then took off the earrings for another year. But not this year.

This year, she put on the earrings one last time and cut her hair. It wasn't the uniform cut, though. She had cut a small portion by her right ear- where her streak used to be (she still remembered it)- shorter. It could easily pass for a mistake when she cut her hair on her own, and could hardly be seen in the uniform bun. She smiled slightly as she twisted her hair into her rendition of the uniform bun; she wasn't going to be uniform. She never was. And she wasn't going to raise the two young children waiting outside to be. She was Divergent, and she was sure one of them would be. She finally understood. So as she took of the earrings, she swore that no matter how these two turned out, she would protect them, but not as her mother did. No, her mother told her to escape the faction that would have killed her for her Divergence. She wasn't going to teach them to run away, she knew they were going to be much braver than she. They were going to make a difference, more than she could have ever done. Unveil the secrets she'd learned were there. And she swore to support them, no matter what.

* * *

Little did she know, she was going to have to use just as much bravery- bravery unknown even to her- to face what her children are discovering. To face whatever she had to face, to help them.

And as she faced the hallucinating Dauntless, she silently prayed that Beatrice would succeed in doing what she hadn't. She silently hoped that all the information Tris had found was enough to allow her to.

She wished that they would learn, even if she never did, because their government was corrupt. Not selfless. She wished that her children would leave the faction system.

Her final wish was selfless and brave, but she didn't need to know that to want it: She wished for their future, the future of the broken community, even if it meant losing any chance of her survival. They just had to find the tape.


End file.
